Biomaterials and medical implant science.

I just returned from a conference at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) titled "Biomaterials and Medical Implant Science." This meeting's recommendations will undoubtedly influence much of what we do, or plan to do, ill biomaterials and biomechanics research in the rest of this decade and into the next century. Accordingly, the JOMI readership should be most interested in the meeting's results. A complete report will be forthcoming soon from NIH, but in the meantime, what follows can serve as one participant's informal report back to that segment of the biomaterials community interested in oral and maxillofacial implants.